Karn lifted his head. He breathed deeply, tried to raise himself. Blood forced his body behind the man's back and lifted. Karn raised himself to a sitting position. Waited, then stood. His right leg was weak but supported his weight.

"The Dark is not in me, Blood. The others don't understand. You do. You know. The Bond between us is strong."

Blood circled his master, yelped. Karn put his left arm back into his shirt, fastened his shirt over his arm to ensure it would not slip out. He checked himself for new abrasions, found the wound in his shoulder was bleeding again. The bandage around his throat was damp on the outside. Blood sat, panting. Karn touched his canines to his lip, stared at his wiilfbunde, removed the rod from his belt.

"Never have you failed me twice," Karn said. "You are the best of all wulfbunde. By dagger and fang, you are the best. With you, I have long been blessed by Ca.n.u.s. I will remind you."

Karn raised the rod and struck Blood once. Blood howled, the other wulfbunde howled. The Forsaken heard and howled in return. Blood stumbled away, ran in a circle, bit, and licked his flank where the rod had struck. The wolf spat, barked fury at his master, moaned, crawled and leaped up, barked again. Karn replaced the rod at his side, checked the bandage at his throat, securing the end.

"I am off to find the Forsaken," Karn said. He left Blood standing.

The wolves of the patrol made their way down the hillside wall after Karn was gone. Blood limped. Arana's wulfbunde drew a red line in the dirt. Blood bit his own paw, crossed the line, judgment on his master made.

Karn followed the howl of the Forsaken. He put weight on his left leg, dragged and hopped on his right. His left arm was still secure in his shirt. He held his last dagger in his right hand. The Lords of Doom shook the leaves. Their light faded with the dawn.

The undergrowth was constant and not high. The path Karn found was clear-crushed leaves, snapped branches, curving around north, west. The hillside's base sloped back up toward Neraka. Karn was forced to work harder.

His uniform shirt was dark with his sweat and blood. The bandage around his neck was wet near the wound, dry where the cloth had once been soaked. The end of the bandage was loose. Karn kept his pace steady. He used the trees to support himself. He didn't stop moving. He bared his canines and breathed quickly. The forest was quiet.

The Forsaken's path led back to the original encampment. The fire was still lit. The cross in the dirt made by Arana had not been blown away by the wind. Karn did not enter the encampment. He hunched by a tree, scouted. He held his dagger to his chest, waited, stood.

From behind, the Forsaken leaped on Karn, forcing him into the encampment.

Karn twisted, brought the dagger around as he fell on his back. The edge of the blade caught the Forsaken on the bridge of the nose, bone cracking, skin shorn. The Forsaken howled, dropped on top of Karn with a knee, breaking ribs.

The Forsaken pinned Karn's arm with a knee, bared b.l.o.o.d.y canines, and struggled to reach Karn's throat. Karn struck with his left leg, tumbled the Forsaken up and over. The Forsaken rolled, twisted, jumped to his feet.

The wolves of the patrol stood behind the Forsaken. Blood stood behind the cross in the dirt, Karn's lashings still fresh on the wolfs body.

Karn turned, got to his feet, dagger ready. He looked past the Forsaken into Blood's eyes, at the cross in the dirt. Karn understood.

"I, too, have been judged," he said. "By dagger and fang."

Blood bared his canines and growled.

The Forsaken snarled, charged forward, broke Karn's wrist, dagger falling. Karn spat and howled, drove his left heel into the ground for support. The Forsaken forced Karn backward into a tree. Karn snarled, struggled, dodged as the Forsaken tore and missed, gouging bark from the tree. The Forsaken pinned Karn by the throat.

Blood leaped, breaking the Forsaken's hold on Karn. The wolfs jaws ripped, tore at the Forsaken's throat, finding arteries, finding veins and tearing them loose. The Forsaken staggered, holding the wolf upright, the two stepping sideways, backward. Blood's muzzle was covered, dripping, from the Forsaken's wounds. The Forsaken raged, slowed, stumbled, toppled backward.

Blood breathed heat into the Forsaken's face. The Forsaken growled at the wolf, did not move. Blood's chest heaved with breath. Waited.

The Forsaken wept. Growled, snarled and clawed the air.

Karn sank to the ground. "Why, wulfbunde?" he asked Blood. "Your judgment was made."

Karn heard the Forsaken laugh, choke around the blood flooding his throat. "In the Age of Might, the Dark Queen brought us the word of Ca.n.u.s. Ca.n.u.s brought us the Bond between wulfbunde and master."

Blood backed away from the Forsaken, turning to Karn. The wolf walked slowly to Karn, shuffled, put his head in Karn's lap, forced his head beneath Karn's hand. Karn tried to brush his fingers against Blood's fur, but could not make his fingers move. Blood moaned, brown eyes meeting Karn's.

Blood's ears twitched. He lifted his head, coughed, lowered his head again. Karn listened. The patrol was nearby. He could hear the other wulfbunde leading their masters to where he lay.

The Forsaken tried to move, lay still. He said, "The Bond is the bond of love. The Dark cannot break the Bond. Above all things, a man loves his wolf."

Karn looked into Blood's eyes and understood. "The Dark cannot break the Bond," Karn said. "Above all things, a wolf loves his man."

A Twist Of The Knife

JEAN RABE.

The snow came at her in a blur-icy shards stinging her face and hands, turning her skin a hurtful pink and chasing her farther into the folds of a tattered woolen cloak. She had no hood or hat, and her long hair whipped about, spun silver dancing madly with the keening wind.

She didn't have to be out in this weather. She could have stayed in the goatherds' village, claiming a spot by a cozy hearth and eating her fill of something warm and reasonably tasty. But she was driven this night, like the snow was driven, and so she struggled to pick up the pace along a narrow path where the drifts were a foot deep in places.

It was the onset of winter in Neraka's Broken Chain Mountains. In the foothills and in the rest of the country there was likely only a dusting of snow-and perhaps no snow at all in the southern parts of the Dark Knight-held land.

But this brutal storm is not so bad, certainly not as bad as others face, she told herself, as if her thoughts might somehow soften the wind's vicious bite. People she knew in Southern Ergoth, where the white dragon Frost held sway, faced weather like this-or worse- every day of the year. Word was they had blizzards so fierce that no man could last outside for more than a few minutes, and she was lasting-and walking- making headway toward the next village.

She didn't see the man against the rocky outcropping. He held his breath and listened, hearing the wind. To him it sounded like a chorus of mournful ghosts. Her boots crunched on the snow as she pa.s.sed by his hiding spot. He waited, silently counting, then stepped out, an inky shadow against the stark whiteness that stretched in all directions.

Shiv was taller than the woman, but only by a few inches, putting him a bit above six feet. His back was straight, his shoulders broad, and the rest of him was oddly narrow, a gaunt man whose silhouette resembled a dagger stuck into the drift growing at his feet.

He was dressed in a smoke-gray jacket and trousers made from the hide of a worg and lined for winter use. A knit cap hugged his hawkish face. Unlike the woman, Shiv did not wear a cloak; he knew it could lash about in the wind, entangling his arms and flapping noisily and perhaps giving him away. He had a pack on his back, padded so it would not rustle, and a purse at his belt-nearly empty, as it had taken practically every coin he owned to find this woman. But his purse and his pockets would be splitting at the seams soon enough, filled with steel and gems. Before the month was out he would be happily doling out some of his riches to the most exotic, perfumed ladies for hire he could find in Jelek's colorful foreign quarter.

Shiv held thin-bladed knives in each gloved hand, smeared with an oily black substance so they would not reflect any gleam off the snow. He'd bought them two years ago from an expert weaponsmith in Bloodspring. Their metal was as hard as the set of his jaw, the edges so keen he hadn't yet needed to resharpen them. Worth every coin, these tools of his trade.

He intended to kill the woman with them.

He would do it quickly, effortlessly, stepping close and slipping the right blade across her throat while plunging the left into the center of her heart. He'd done it so many times before. Afterward, he would drag her off the trail, take her body a little higher into the mountains where the wolves would catch the scent and devour the evidence.

But he wouldn't do it here. It was too close to the village she'd just left, too risky that someone following after a stray goat might-despite this d.a.m.nable storm-glimpse the deed.

And he wouldn't do it tonight.

It was too soon.

He'd only just managed to find her, late this afternoon. He didn't know her yet, didn't have her walk down, hadn't looked into her eyes. He didn't know how strong she was, and, most importantly, he had no clue about her contacts in these mountain villages. This last crucial bit could take a few days to ferret out, perhaps longer.

So he followed several yards behind her, gloved hands reflexively closing on the handles of his weapons before sheathing them, dark eyes squinting against the frenetic snow as they trained on her back.

It was work to keep her in sight, his chest burning from the exertion, his legs aching from slogging through mounds of snow. Twice he dived into a drift when she turned to check her bearings. Were it not for the whirling snow she might have spied him or his tracks. His teeth chattered, and he muttered a silent curse that perhaps he'd been a fool to take on this job at this time. Couldn't her a.s.sa.s.sination have waited until spring?

He guessed it took them nearly two hours to reach her destination-a ramshackle a.s.sortment of wood and stone buildings wedged into a mountain overhang. He made out on a sign partially buried by a drift: KETH'S CRADLE. More like the Abyss's Cradle, he thought.

She hurried toward the largest dwelling, a turtlesh.e.l.l-shaped affair that was busily belching smoke into the sky. He watched her for a moment more, then quickly began to circle the tiny community, which by the malodorous aroma that hung in the air, and the pens he barely made out, declared it another village of goatherds.

She rapped firmly on the door.

"I am Risana," she stated.

Ree-shanna. That was the name Shiv had been given, though his employers had p.r.o.nounced it differently- Ris-aye-nah. That was the name Shiv had been given, though his employers had p.r.o.nounced it differently- Ris-aye-nah.

"Risana," she repeated, as the door finally opened. "Risana of Crossing." Her voice was musical and held no trace of the tiredness she most certainly felt. "You sent word that you needed me."

"Yes!" came the breathless reply. "The Solamnic Knight."

"I-"

"At last you're here, dear woman. Please." Without another word she was ushered inside, and the heavy door slammed shut behind her.

Shiv worked his way behind the turtlesh.e.l.l dwelling, peering through the cracks of a shuttered window that couldn't close properly because the frame had warped. He could see only the main room from his vantage-point, but it was enough. The merrily burning fireplace made it appear warm, and Shiv pressed himself against the wall in the futile hope of catching some of that heat.

An old, bent man with a mustache and goatee, who Shiv idly thought parroted the village's cloven-hoofed charges, drew Risana to the center of the room, where four blanket-wrapped forms were stretched out on cots. There were a half-dozen women of various ages sitting in straight wooden chairs, their backs to the fire and sympathetic faces angled toward the forms. Their conversation stopped as Risana moved to the smallest patient. Their eyes trained on her now.

Shiv watched her, too. On initial inspection the firelight revealed nothing untoward about Risana. She was just a tall, young woman wrapped in a tattered cloak, the rosy hue of which suggested the garment had been red at one time. She was a plain-looking woman, really, Shiv thought, a commoner who could have lost herself in the lower- or middle-cla.s.s quarters of any town, someone most folks wouldn't stop to give a second look. But then he gave her a second look, a careful one, and saw that she was young, all right, very. Certainly not yet twenty, he decided, and nothing common about her. The woman was singular. One simply had to see past her tattered garments and fatigue.

Her face was well defined, angular without being sharp, the planes of it smooth and unblemished, and it looked as if she was blushing because of the cold and windburn. Her nose turned slightly upward, a hint of aristocracy, and the bearing suited her. While her hair had looked like sparkling silver outside in the snow, here, wet and flat against her head, it seemed an unusual shade of blonde, the color of cooled ashes-an almost whitish-gray that shone like silk. He imagined it must be soft to the touch.

Her eyes were charcoal, dark and large and rimmed with long black lashes. Those eyes seemed to take in everything, and measure-the women by the fire, the bundled-up people on the cots, the old, bent man who was speaking to her, and the windows, where her gaze lingered. Had she seen him? He held his breath, not blinking. Were her eyes locked with his? No, he breathed a sigh of relief. Her eyes were clearly fixed at some point far beyond this room and Neraka.

Shiv turned his face, concentrating to catch fragments of what was being said inside.

"It's not pneumonia," the bent man was telling Risana. He wrung his hands nervously. "I know pneumonia. I can treat pneumonia. Someone here gets it every year. It's something worse, this is-a plague maybe, something that spreads. Emil and his family have it, too. They're in the house across the way. And the Donners might be getting it."

"We might be next," the stoutest of the six women cut in.

"We shouldn't be sitting so close to the sick," another whispered in a high-pitched voice.

"I'll sit where I please," the stout woman returned.

Risana knelt at the cot nearest the window, tugging the blanket back to reveal a red-faced child with dozens of lesions on his arms and neck. The boy, no more than six or seven, coughed deeply, shoulders bouncing against the pine frame of the cot. The child was overly thin, there was a sheen on his skin, and his clothes were dark with sweat.

"A plague," the bent man continued. "It has to be. The runner said Graespeck and Tornhollow have sick folks, too. Just like this. Some of 'em dying. That's why we sent for you. The runner said you were fixing folks in the villages to the south of here. Said that you maybe knew how to cure this kind of illness. We're desperate."

She replaced the covers and smoothed the boy's hair. He started to offer her a smile, but began coughing again, which was echoed by one of the other blanketed forms. The stout woman loudly sucked in her breath.

"That's why our message said this was an emergency, ma'am. We're a small village. Don't want more people catching this disease, and we don't want no one dying. Our Jamie-the little one here-he's real bad."

Softer, the bent man added, "He's my youngest grandson."

Risana nodded and ran her fingers across the child's forehead.

"A very strong fever," she said. She twisted to her right so she could reach to another cot, feeling the forehead of an elderly woman.

"My wife," the bent man said.

"Mother," one of the six women added, choking back a sob. "She's not been conscious for two days."

Shiv noted that there was some resemblance between the women by the fire. Sisters. The other two patients no doubt were relatives also. The sisters had started talking again, filling the room with the sound of their buzzing. They asked Risana what she could do to help the ill. The thickset one, practically begging, made it clear Jamie was her son and should be tended to first. None argued with her.

The oldest sister politely asked what had brought Risana into Neraka, and why she was healing folks in the mountain villages when Solamnic Knights were considered the enemy around here. "Not that we take you for an enemy," she added, "but if the Dark Knights catch you, they'll kill you."

Risana didn't reply. She stood, taking off her voluminous cloak, which was quickly gathered by the bent man. She stretched, rolled her head to work a kink out of her neck.

A Solamnic Knight with no armor, Shiv thought, knowing his mark was now an easier one.

The firelight from the hearth played across her tall form. Her sword seemed well maintained, the pommel highly polished silver that was fashioned in the shape of a griffon's claw. The scabbard was worn and ripped in places, and the blade showed through, catching the light and reflecting motes that danced across the walls.

Risana unbuckled her sword belt, and the bent man took this too, shuffling away and hanging it and her cloak on a hook near the door. She had a big pouch tied to her waist, and she was fumbling with this now, pulling smaller pouches from it, a few tiny vials, softly issuing instructions that Shiv could not hear. He got the gist of it though, as the bent man and two of the sisters hurried to heat some water over the fire. The remaining four women resumed their buzzing talk, the thickset one casting frequent concerned glances at the coughing boy.

Risana did not pause in tending to the ill until dawn threatened to take over the sky. She constantly moved between the turtlesh.e.l.l home and the one called "Emil's place." She had diagnosed the malady as Redlant Fever, adding that a few of the eldest Knights in the Solamnic unit she'd been a.s.signed to were struck with it shortly after coming to Neraka well more than a year ago. A potentially deadly threat that seemed to strike the young and the old the hardest, she demonstrated that with the right medicines it was not terribly difficult to treat. She gave them details about the mixtures she was using so they could duplicate it with their own herbs, then she sat by the bed of the old woman.

Just as the small community began to wake up, Shiv stepped away from the shadows and moved around to the front of the building. He was dressed differently now, in well-worn clothes he had retrieved from his pack. He no longer stood straight. He adopted a list to his right, rounded his shoulders and turned his left foot so he appeared clubfooted. He shuffled forward and knocked on the door. Several moments later it was answered by the bent man, whose eyes were rimmed by dark circles from lack of sleep.

"Snow's filled the trail t' Graespeck," Shiv said, sounding half out of breath, his voice all craggy. "Too tough t' walk it right now. Lookin' for a place f stay until it stops snowin'." He looked up at the sky for effect, the snow still coming down hard, though the wind had dwindled to almost nothing. He shivered, something easy to do as he was indeed cold, and he thrust his hands into his pockets. "I was wonderin' if I could . . ."

"Thanks for your hospitality. Name's Safford," Shiv lied as he slipped past.

"Wilcher," came the reply. "Erl Wilcher. Take care, Mister Safford. We've sick folks here, though we've got someone busy healing them."

Shiv shuffled into the main room, heading straight to the fireplace and waving his hands in front of the flames. The heat felt good to his sixty-year-old frame, and he let himself bask in the sensation for several moments before he turned to study Risana.

Her shoulders were slumped. Still, she kept her vigil at the old woman's side.

The daughters moved between the other three patients-all who were remarkably improved and sitting up on the cots. There were only a few lesions remaining on the boy called Jamie. He no longer coughed, and his mother was clucking her thanks to the young healer.

"Here. Drink up!" One of the sisters thrust a bowl of soup at Risana. "It's spiced chicken broth."

Risana declined, until the three improving patients, the sisters, Wilcher, and even the newcomer had some first. Then she took a chipped bowl between her hands, closed her eyes as if in prayer, and drank.

The soft light that streamed in through the windows gave silver highlights to her hair and revealed cuts to her garments that only could have been made by a sword.

"You're a Knight," Shiv stated, trying to draw her out into conversation. "A Solamnic." She didn't answer. "That charm a pokin' out from your shirt," he continued, gesturing with a finger. "That says you're a Knight of the Rose."

Risana fingers fluttered to her neck, finding a gold chain and charm that had worked itself free. She was quick to stuff it under her shirt and tabard.

"A wilted rose," he said wryly, noting that the sisters were upset at his prying. "And one without any armor. Where's the rest of your unit?" Any information about other Solamnic Knights in Neraka would be worth something to his employers.